A continuation of chapter 39!
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Rot
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Danny made the split second decision that he wanted none of this.
He ran.
It was easy for him to run. He knew this city. Knew it better than ever, since the merge. Every angle, line of sight, and warp of space was known to him with the ease of familiarity and reflex of long practice. Portals opened for him and shadows hid him. He knew exactly how to step out of sight. How to be invisible without actually becoming invisible.
This gave him time to ponder the words of the ghosts the Chicagoans had brought with them. Ponder, and reject.
Just because the merge happened on his birthday did not mean it was because of his birthday. It was a coincidence. Unrelated. Not his fault. He'd been over this. He'd gotten over this.
It didn't take him long to get from the mall to the center of the outdoor portion of the market fair. The main body of it was held in what had become a large clearing in the middle of town, although it had long since spilled over, into the adjoining streets, a patchwork of green grass and trees, lavender moss, five different kinds of asphalt, brick, and antique stonework. Some of the bricks held remains of windows in them. There had been a rumor that a building had been crushed to make room for it all, at the beginning of the trouble, but the building in question had eventually been located two dozen miles to the east, none of the residents the worse for wear.
After that, it was only a matter of weaving in and out of all the shoppers until he got to the tent his parents set up on market days. He waved to Jack, who was manning the front desk and cleaning a rather intimidating and violent looking tool that Danny knew to be, surprisingly enough, just a vacuum, and pushed through the flap into the tent.
Safe. Mostly. Rumors spread by out of town ghosts or not, there weren't a lot of people who would antagonize the Fentons. Although their (admittedly softened) attitude towards ghosts was becoming progressively less acceptable, they were the main reason Amity Park and Elmerton were doing so well.
(Danny had heard some dreadful rumors about other cities. Certain people did not take the apocalypse well at all.)
He leaned against the wall of the building the tent was built against and sighed. Outside, he heard the familiar sounds of Ember checking the tuning on her guitar and restarting her performance.
"Danny? Is something wrong?"
It was probably too much to hope that no one had recognized him. That didn't mean anyone would come after him, but...
"A case of mistaken identity, I think," said Danny, picking himself up off the wall.
"What kind of mistaken identity?"
Danny made a face. "I don't even know. The person looked kind of sketchy, so I got out of there."
"Do you think they're likely to find you again? Or come looking for you?" Maddie's hand strayed to the grip of a all-purpose stun blaster she kept in her boot.
Things might have been relatively peaceful in Amity Park now, years after the event, but immediately after the apocalypse there had been anarchy. From humans and ghosts both. A great many people were armed at all times, and it paid to be vigilant against threats to oneself and one's family.
"I think so. It was pretty out there, so I don't think they were entirely in their right mind. But there are going to be rumors now." He tugged at one of his longer strands of hair.
"That's good, if that's all," said Maddie, relaxing marginally and gesturing at the workbench in front of her. "Will you help me with this? We got some same day refill and repair orders already this morning."
Danny nodded. That was, after all, one of the reasons he was here. He let himself get lost in the repetitive motions of refilling ectoplasm charge capsules for small ecto-armaments. It was soothing, to a degree.
There was a bit of a thump from the front, loud enough to be heard over the ambient noise of the market fair. Both Danny and Maddie looked up.
"I don't know who you think you are," came Jack's voice, filtering back through the fabric of the tent, "but you can't come here and start throwing baseless accusations around about my family."
"It isn't baseless," shouted a dismally familiar voice. The Baxters never were going to give it up, were they? "You freaks are the reason we had ghosts in Amity Park to begin with! How do we know your portal didn't decide to go ahead and fracture all of reality?"
"We never dealt with anything of that power level, and it wouldn't have done that anyway!"
"So you claim, but it isn't as if there's anyone else around who could check-"
"Please, we're only looking for some information, and have no association with this... person. We represent the government of the Greater Chicago Area, and-"
"Oh, you're a customer, then! We have many models to choose from, if you're looking for protection against ghosts, whether they be the sentient variety or mindless ecto-scum! What kind do you have in mind? Big? Medium? Small? Intimidation, or something easily hidden? Or maybe you're just looking for something to get those nasty ectoplasm stains out of your clothes?"
As Jack went through his version of the standard sales pitch, Maddie stood up and pulled open the tent flap. Danny winced as he saw the faces of the Chicagoan woman and her companions, Dash Baxter's father, a large crowd of curious bystanders to whom Jack was utterly oblivious, and, across the street, the cohort of ghosts that had accused Danny of being a prince and then 'blessed' him.
"Hey! It's you!" shouted one of the Chicagoans, pointing at Danny.
The crowd quieted for a moment.
"See!" crowed Mr. Baxter. "See! He's the one they said was responsible for this."
"That's not what we said, sir. Perhaps you could leave, this is a matter of national, no, global importance, and," she turned to look at Danny, "we must talk to-"
"What, exactly, do you want with my son?" asked Maddie, icily.
The Chicagoan's leader, the man, swallowed. "We we informed, by what we believe to be a reliable source, that a person in this town... er. Has significant influence over ghosts and can be negotiated with regarding the current state of the world. A ghost king of sorts."
"A reliable source? Ha!" said Jack with a scoff. "I hope you don't mean a ghost. Even the smarter ones exist for nothing but trouble. And they hate us!"
"There was a ghost king here," said Maddie, "but that was years before the merge with the Ghost Zone, and he didn't stay long. I am also," she said, wielding the word like a knife, "unsure of what that has to do with my son."
"He was indicated by our contacts as a person who might be connected to this ghost king."
"That's nonsense," said Maddie, Jack nodding along.
"Still, we must insist-"
"You aren't insisting anything about my children, you-"
"Excuse me? Doctors Fenton?"
They broke off their conversation to look at the newcomer.
"I've just come in from near Henry's Hill," she said. "An elemental pool came in overnight."
"They aren't elemental pools. They're ectoplasm-matter integration points. Ectomat points. Integration points. Pools of transmutation, if you must. Ectoplasm isn't made of normal matter, so calling it elemental is just-" She sighed, cutting herself off. "How big is it?"
The argument had been abandoned. Integration pools, no matter what you decided to call them, could be dangerous. From a distance, they appeared to be simple pools of ectoplasm, but they were much more than that.
Anything nonliving that made contact with one would be dissolved and remade as something both material and ectoplasmic. Stronger ghosts could resist to a degree, and from what Danny had observed, it seemed to leave ghost cores alone, but weaker ghosts were vulnerable. Even then, with living things, they would be infused with ectoplasm, although Danny couldn't call them half ghosts.
The results tended to be... unpredictable.
"It was a few meters across when I left." She swallowed. "It was in the goat pasture. We let them roam during the summer, they..." The woman clutched at the hem of her shirt. "Some of them were missing."
That could go a lot of different ways. Many of them were not good.
"We need to finish the orders we already have," said Maddie. "We should be ready to go in an hour. You'll have to guide us there."
"You have something you can do about the pools? Something to negate them?" asked the Chicagoan.
"It doesn't work all the time," said Maddie, adjusting her belt. "But what we can do is take care of anything dangerous that comes out of one." She regarded him rather coolly. "If you want to see, come back in an hour. Danny, make sure the Speeder is prepped."
"Got it," said Danny.
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It took a few hours to get to Henry's Hill.
By the time they got there, the sky had decided to be stranger than usual, broken into tiles like in a mosaic, the moon smeared across the sky in all its phases even as the sun burned pink and yellow from an inscribed disk. Better than red. The red sun was rarely a good omen. The red sun was for storms and fires and mist that didn't clear.
But a worse omen was the presence of the Chicagoan's and the ghosts who had decided to proclaim him king.
He really needed to figure out what they called themselves, but he didn't want to talk to them again, for obvious reasons.
"Danny, stop daydreaming," said Maddie. "Keep an eye out for ecto-goats. Jack, help me set up the perimeter for the shield."
The transmutation pool was large. Big enough to be called a pond, big enough to swim in, assuming it was a respectable depth. It had formed around the trunk of a large oak tree, and little green lights drifted above its surface. The oak tree had glowing green veins stretching up through its bark, which was a deep, dark color. Its acorns were oddly pale. The grass around the pool was purple.
The air smelled of decay and rain. Danny licked his lips. It felt like there should be more moisture in the air.
(Sometimes, Danny got the urge to wade into one of the pools. To sink in. He resisted.)
There was no sign of the goats.
"You'll probably have to burn the tree," said Maddie.
"I know," said the woman who had fetched them, wringing her hands. "But you can get rid of it, right?"
"It's big," said Maddie. "I'm not sure we have enough. We might have to wait it out."
"But the earth and air elementals," started the woman.
"Earth and air are not elements," said Maddie. "We're more than equipped enough to handle those, if it comes to it."
"Rot and petrichor, my prince," said one of the ghosts. "Don't you feel it in the air? Can't you taste it?"
Rot and petrichor. Decay and rain. Danny grimaced, and deliberately looked away.
"This moment was made for you, my prince. To confirm you in these blessings, as you should be confirmed in all blessings."
"I'm good, actually," said Danny.
"Don't engage with those no good spooks, Danny boy! They're just here to stir up trouble!"
Danny rolled his eyes. Still on the 'no good spooks' thing. Typical.
The shield went up with a fwoop and an electric crackle.
"Still no sign of the goats," said Maddie. "We might need to make this a real hunt."
Gosh, Danny hoped not. Odds were, the ghosts, ahem, the goats, the ghostly goats, weren't any more aggressive than normal goats. It wasn't like the personalities of the things involved changed.
But goats, hm... Actually, that might be problematic. He didn't have a lot of experience with farm animals, so... Yeah. Goats. They didn't have the best of reputations, did they?
Still, the way his parents went after elementals and mixed organisms made him uneasy. The few humans to accidentally slip into one of the pools had just been declared 'abnormally ecto-contaminated,' and Danny didn't have any evidence of ghost powers, but... Yeah.
Yeah.
Maddie finished setting up the integration negation delivery system, sticking the barrel of the gun through the shield. She sighed at the negation fluid capsule she had just filled, calculated to negate the estimated amount of ectoplasm in the pool.
"This will deplete our reserves," she said. "It'll take a while to make more of this." She slid the capsule into place and fired. Quickly, she pulled the barrel out of the shield and braced.
Ectoplasm splashed from the pool, staining the grass purple where it landed. A moment later, there was a flash of light that strained at the shield.
When the light faded, the insides of the shields were green smoke. Slowly, that began to clear as well, until it revealed a empty hollow full of purple grass where the pool had once been. The oak tree, less supported than it had been, now that many of its roots were exposed, creaked ominously.
At least, that was probably all the humans saw.
Danny rubbed his arms. Ectoplasm, much like normal matter, didn't just disappear. Not completely. In the past, it might have returned to the Ghost Zone, but not anymore.
And whatever was in the pools wasn't just disappearing either. Some of it was getting converted to energy, energy which might eventually be turned back into ectoplasm, but the rest was just going somewhere else.
The world was still changing. His parents were only slowing it down.
(Sometimes Danny wanted them to stop. There wasn't anything wrong with being between one world and the other. Especially since there was only one world now.)
The scent of ozone built in the air and ectoplasm seemed to leak from it, back into the pool, refilling it.
"That... has never happened before," said Maddie. "We have to take notes!"
Danny sighed. This would take a long time, then. The ectoplasm would either have to be absorbed by the grass, or the ectoplasm would have to dissolve the earth and stone beneath it, or the air above, for the purpose of turning them into 'elementals.' They wouldn't have any intelligence, at least at first, but they would, eventually, like most other things made of ectoplasm.
"My prince," said the spokesperson of the ghosts, "if you truly desired this pool of recreation to be gone, you need only command it to assume a form that suits you."
"I'm pretty sure I can't do that," said Danny.
"It wouldn't hurt to try, would it?" asked a Chicagoan.
"It might, actually," said Maddie, looking away from her notes. "Ectoplasm is psychoactive and there's a lot we don't know about this phenomenon, even three years later. Danny, can you help me with this?" She gestured at the ectometer she was trying to balance on her knee.
"Sure," said Danny.
This was when the goats decided to make an appearance, sheering out of invisibility and charging the crowd. Danny pushed Maddie out of the way of a goat's curved, glowing horns and was borne backwards, into one of the shield generators, which promptly broke.
Danny tumbled, following his usual 'oh, no, I'm just a weak human, I can't possibly fight these mutant goats, no matter how good I am at other ghost-related things' act, and rolled right into the transmutation pool.
Ah.
Hm.
He shouldn't have done that.
"Danny! Quick! Get out of there!"
He stood up quickly, but it was like the liquid in the pool had turned into putty. It didn't want to let him go. It wrapped around him, almost lovingly.
Danny really didn't want to know what prolonged contact with this stuff would do to him.
"Get off!" He shouted, a whisper of his wail leaking into his tone.
The liquid lost viscosity, collapsing again. Danny stood there dripping for a moment, then dragged himself the rest of the way out of the pool.
He dragged a cape woven of purple grass, wildflowers, and tiny mushrooms with him. His clothing was completely different. More formal. He still wasn't wearing shoes.
(The liquid ectoplasm sunk into his skin, leaving him dry. Behind him, he could feel the transformation pool evaporating, forming a cloud elemental many feet above. It would rain, soon, and there would be ectoplasm and other things in that rain. The hollow that once held the pool would contain mushrooms that glowed and glimmered and spread.)
"Um," said Danny.
"Ha!" said the Chicagoan's leader. "You said you weren't anything special and didn't know what we were talking about, but is there anything you want to explain now, young man?"
"No," said Danny, he turned back to his parents. "Can we go home now?"
"Quick, Danno, strip! We need to decontaminate you!"
Danny looked at the crowd of strangers and acquaintances.
"No."